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A cycle, maybe?
"What do you mean, and? And I was so busy throwing up and in pain that I couldn't get out of bed."
"You have a phone."
"It was a weekend."
"That you were supposed to be working."
Because I worked every single weekend. I guess I had been so messed up in the past that it never bothered me.
"The world hasn't seemed to implode," I said, realizing my mistake when Sunny's giant palm closed around the front of my throat, cutting off my air supply, making my chest immediately tighten, my face feel weirdly hot and tingly as he yanked me up off the chair by it and held me against his body.
"Show some mother fucking respect, Beth," he growled.
"We need her conscious," Mitchell reminded his son who released me enough to allow a small amount of air, but not nearly enough to stop the lightheadedness and strangled feeling in my chest as I tried to gasp for more. "No one said you have to be a junkie," he went on like nothing was unusual about this particular meeting. That was because, for him and his sons, it wasn't. "But you do have to work and you do have to follow the rules." He stood slowly, turning his wrist to look down at the shiny face of his watch. "Well, we have another appointment. I expect you to ice that eye, put makeup on that neck, and be at work the day after tomorrow."
With that, Sunny's grip completely loosened, unexpected, making me drop down to the floor, gasping like a fish out of water, as they walked past me and let themselves out.
The door clicked close- the sound like relief. My hand went up to cover my mouth to try to muffle the sop that escaped me. The tears were expected and unstoppable as I sat there trying to calm myself down.
I knew it was going to happen eventually.
I knew they would find me.
I knew they would hurt me just enough to make a point.
And I certainly knew that there was no way they were going to let me go.
Because I knew too much.
I had too much dirt.
I could send them away for decades.
I was a liability.
It was easier to manage when I was too high to give a damn about anything.
But I was another problem entirely when I was clean and clear-headed.
How long would it be before they found a way to get me to use again, to use that to control me again? Until, eventually, it killed me and solved their problem for them.
Hell, Mitchell was probably downright disappointed when I said I had overdosed and lived through it.
I swallowed hard, my own saliva burning like battery acid as I pushed myself up and walked on numb legs toward the bedroom and into the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror.
It wasn't pretty.
I had been expecting as much.
My eye was swollen, the whites inside red in color, the area under taking a bluish hint that I knew time would only darken. My throat was ugly, long bands of finger-shaped bruises all across the front. Again, they would only darken.
My hands reached up and scrubbed the tears off my cheeks, knowing they were useless, knowing there was no reason to cry over a situation I had no control over.
Over in the bedroom, the generic ring of the burner phone made my heart fly up into my throat as I moved and found it under the blankets, the screen illuminated with his name.
Lazarus.
Good, sweet, perfect, caring, selfless, protective Lazarus.
He would come back, see me, and demand to know what happened, ask for all the ugly details of my life before. I would have no choice but to give them to him.
Then, well, I knew to my bones what would happen.
He would go after them because of what they did to me.
And he being a badass former junkie, former dealer, current cage fighter and guard at an underground fighting club as well as an outlaw biker who dealt in arms, yeah, he would think he could take them on.
He wouldn't listen to reason.
And then he would get hurt, likely fatally.
And it would be all my fault.
I couldn't live with that. Not after all he had done for me.
No way.
I had to go back. I had to learn to live with the consequences of my actions.
He didn't.
I wouldn't let him.
My heart was a giant wound as I put the cell down on the nightstand as it started ringing again. I found my shoes and my wallet, and figured my phone was a lost cause so with that, a pit the size of Texas in my stomach, I walked out of the apartment.
I walked out of the building.
I left the impossible life behind.
I should have known it wasn't something someone like me could have.
Nothing I had done in my life would suggest I was deserving of all that Lazarus had to offer.
